Kazantzakis Travelling England festival in Heraklion

If you are in Crete do not miss the five days full of Literature and Art, readings, theater, dance, music, exhibitions, events and children’s activities. Nikos Kazantzakis was in England at the invitation of the British Council shortly before the outbreak of WW II. Initially residing in London, he travels to the industrial cities of the north, Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield, as far as Peterborough, Eton and finally Stratford, the birthplace of Shakespeare. He writes about his impressions of this trip while on the island of Aegina in the summer of 1940.

The keen eye of the Cretan writer brings to readers today an image of the country and its people in a transitional period. It is another opportunity to highlight the multifaceted and long-standing ties of the two nations that constitute a fixed point of reference in a changing world.

“A journey that started last year with a pilgrimage visit to Spain continues this year by crossing the English Channel to get to England. To England by Nikos Kazantzakis.

The pen of the great writer leads us to the big island at the dawn of the Second World War. And we, travelers through the pages that the creator of Odyssey embroidered with unmatched mastery, are looking for the past of the great country to join it with the present, so that we remain faithful to Nikos Kazantzakis who was writing to express his great love in timelessness.

The space, the time, and the thoughts of Nikos Kazantzakis about England become theater, music, visual arts, game and we are all invited to search for the Kazantzakis’ view of England, with the help of contemporary creators who will start from various places to come together and join us in Myrtia. A view of England that starts from the dawn of its history, passes through the era of the industrial revolution and the preparation of the technological explosion, and is prophetically led to today.

The series of festivals that the Kazantzakis Museum ambitiously launched last year dedicated to his travel books, aims at a mental tour of the history and the culture of the countries visited by our great traveler. At the same time, it aims at helping the readers get acquainted with his works under the general subject “Traveling …” that essentially established travel literature in Greece.

This year we have the great pleasure of the fraternization of the Nikos Kazantzakis Museum with the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. It is a happy occasion that the fraternization coincides with our mental wandering in the country of the great English dramatist whose “creatures” were conceived by the great Cretan writer as of his own. The spiritual trust of the two “free” men, invites us to join them in their long wandering which is guided by their own dreams.